Companies and users are being deluged with vast amounts of data on a daily basis, some data that is to be saved and some that is to be deleted. In either case, the ability to decide which data to keep and which to delete is a daily and endless process that can consume an inordinate amount of time and effort not only for the company but also for the user. This becomes particularly important with dealing with data retention policies, especially for legal matters. However, the categorization of data remains a cumbersome and tedious prospect, especially for users.
Data can be organized by tagging or filing into folders. Increasingly, the trend is to tag data for easy categorization. One specific application of data tagging is in the area of messages such as email. Tagging can be an approach for infoworkers to organize incoming email. Each tag can have a different retention policy assigned by an administrator. By tagging an email the infoworker tells the system how and when the email should be reclaimed or recycled. Compared to the managed folder approach, tagging does not interrupt the workflow of the infoworker, and therefore, alleviates the pain of dragging email messages to specific folders.
Although infoworkers can use rules and default tags to automatically assign tags to incoming email, the amount of email that requires user intervention is still a pain for infoworkers with high incoming mail flow. Moreover, each user follows unique patterns for tagging data thereby reducing the reliability of providing properly tagged data, if tagged at all.